Tal, a conversation with an alien (18 page)

So everything is possible?

If there is a physically possible configuration of matter, it exists somewhere in the multiverse. It would not make sense if it did not. Why should this course of events exist, and others not? Though some variation would be so unlikely, that if you filled your observable universe with sand, you would be looking for one grain. However, unlikely is not the same as impossible. Some things would break the laws of physics and hence are impossible, at least in nearby universes. I say nearby universes because the laws of your world are not universal. They were set at the very chaotic start of the big bang, when the rules of this universe and others like it were defined. Due to the very strong influence of quantum effects at that time, many different universes and laws governing those universes were created. There are actually countless worlds out there that are fundamentally different from your own. 

--
I took a few moments to think. I stared into my tea cup, I am not sure for how long, and then said, 

I can't say that I feel all that much better about a world where everything possible happens anyway, and my life is just a result of forces beyond my co
ntrol. Perhaps it really is a bigger and better world than the one I know, but I think I like my smaller one, where at least I have some control over my destiny.

Does this come
back to the free will question?

I suppose.
You said earlier we could have free will since we can still choose, but then you said that we weren't even choosing; we were just interpreting subconscious choices with our conscious mind.

That is correct, but things are not so black and white.
We all make choices, but they are limited by our nature and our environment. Does a salmon make choices? Yes, but it is still stuck in the river, and its choices are influenced by its internal instincts. It cannot always control whether it will be eaten by a bear, no matter how hard it tries to avoid one. Can it jump this way or that, can it even decide to challenge its programming and not swim upstream? Under certain circumstances yes, though other salmon would call it insane. But even an insane salmon can't leave the river and go for a walk in the woods. Unless it had gotten really lucky and developed a mutation that gave it lungs. So do I have more choice than you do? Yes, but there are still possibilities I cannot see, still paths I cannot choose. If you can know anything about the universe it is that everything is a matter of scale. There are no intrinsically small or large things, there are only relationships between them. That is all that can be in an infinite universe. Hence you may have free will. Is it complete free will? No, is it more than a fish? Perhaps.

But subconscious choice doesn't seem like free willed choice to me.

Let me give you an example, one of many, where there is no dividing line between subconscious choice and conscious choice. In many physical activities such as sports or martial arts, the dependence on subconscious decision-making is extremely beneficial. Once you have become skilled in sports or just about anything, it is often said that you do not think about each action, you react instinctively. In martial arts if you think about every technical aspect of your attack, just like if you think of every detail of your swing while swinging at a baseball coming at you at one hundred miles an hour, you will not do well. You must depend on your subconscious mind to guide your body. Are the subconscious reactions of your body free willed actions?

I would say no, s
ince you have to trust your subconscious processes.

Would this dependence on subconscious process work for a
beginner, in martial arts or in baseball?

No, a novice
would fail miserably. They need to learn the mechanics first, they have to practice, train their mind and body so they can react properly.

So
to master the technique of a sport takes conscious input. You must choose to practice. To sacrifice your time, to consistently make the daily decision to practice, to be at the gym for hours instead of watching TV. These are conscious decisions. All of these longer, involved decisions mold the quality of your subconscious reactions. Your subconscious reactions may not be observed or manipulated by you, but they are a result of choices and actions you have made during your life. Are these decisions made completely independently of the world around you? No. They depend on prior decisions, interactions, genes, brain functions, chemical balances; it is a very long list. So your choices are limited, but I would not say you are completely helpless. Subconscious decisions inform conscious ones, conscious decisions inform subconscious ones. Without the free willed decisions to practice, your subconscious skill cannot develop. Hence you do control your future to some extent, just not to the extent you would like. Obviously being able to see actual futures and choose to experience them is appealing and is a higher level of choice. But this is choice you do not have. Your consciousness is like a stone, cast in the dimension of variation. You do not have the conscious freedom to choose your exact physical location in the multiverse. However, unlike a stone, you can consciously and subconsciously choose to increase your chances of observing certain outcomes. If you decide to take a month long trek through the Himalaya instead of sailing for a month in Bermuda, even though you cannot choose exactly how your Himalayan trip will turn out, you can be pretty sure that you will be cold, tired, and require the aid of shirpas. You will not get a suntan. Well maybe just on a few exposed bits of skin. In the end it is still choice, less than you would like, more than you probably deserve.

So you are saying there is some choice and some
luck.

Yes, sometimes it just pays to be lucky because you cannot completely
control the outcome of anything. You are not oblivious to the fact that the future may hold many different outcomes. In fact, is it not a natural pattern of human thought to imagine many worlds and predict those outcomes? Do you not desire to observe the future and to control what your future will be?  For most humans your conscious mind, your attention, is not even with your body in real time, it is usually imagining some other place and time. Your consciousness is rarely in the moment. Aside from times when you are doing some extremely complex task, your mind is usually busy planning what will be for dinner, or thinking about some event that happened yesterday, or feeling upset because your boss is the son of a genius monkey. Rarely are you observing the moment and place that you are. Modern humans spend most of their time absorbed in their mental world, regretting the past or imagining the future, rarely in the present.

Yes, I think that is definitely human nature.

There are very difficult and millennia old human practices of actually trying to be, where you are. Methods of observing your current time and current variation fully with all of your attention. Yet your mind is always being dragged away from observing your current universe. You are constantly thinking of your hopes, dreams, and regrets; imagining the many histories and many futures of the multiverse. When your consciousness is focused on your current experience and you are observing the actual world, not your imaginary one, you can experience your current world more fully. To completely remove all imagined thoughts, to find one pure stream of consciousness, to intently observe just your single current coordinate in the multiverse is virtually impossible even for a few minutes by the untrained human mind. If this was the true form of the universe; no other time but the present, no other universe but the current one, then I would think this practice would be very easy for humans. It is not.

This is definitely true.
Only when I play chess do I feel like I am in the moment. And only in the most intense games do I sometimes feel completely engrossed, and time seems to stop, or rather pass without me noticing it.

This is the rush, or the flow, the excitement
of in the moment experience. This is a dramatic feeling many humans seek. Yet I am speaking of an even more difficult art of pure observation. Where your mind is not distracted by any mental activity, except the singular observation of the current moment and the current world.

Why is it so difficult to focus on the present?
  Was the conscious mind's desire to learn from mistakes and anticipate futures part of a primitive survival instinct?

There is no doubt that being able to imagine many worlds; the ability to imagine alternate histories and fut
ures is important for survival. Learning from the past and being able to plan for the future is critical, especially in social groups. A successful hunt for instance, requires the ability to plan and predict the action of your prey, and then learning what you did wrong so you can be more efficient the next time. Humans developed even more complicated visualization skills when they took up agriculture, with all of its tedious planning of crop and livestock growth. Focusing on the moment, being extremely aware of your current surroundings isn't necessarily as critical for survival in such planned out societies. Throughout human history, some cultures favored the ability to communicate and plan, while others valued awareness and intuitive reaction.  

But
the worlds we imagine don't really exist do they? 

When you say you imagine a possibility, to you
, it exists only in your mind. However, that possibility does physically exist in the multiverse. The memories you have of past events, and the future events you imagine may seem like only thoughts to you, but they are manifest realities in other worlds. Some of the possibilities you imagine are truly unlikely to the point of being irrelevant, but some are not, some dreams do come true just as you imagined.

Are you saying by imagining possibilities we are also observing many worlds?

Not exactly. The difference is that you, while imagining, are observing a mental image of a world, not the actual variation of the multiverse that your physical body occupies. The world created by your mind is an approximation, a representation of the universe; it is a mental world. Though these mental worlds do play a dominant role in your life. When you observe your mental images, they are often just as powerful, or even more powerful than actual events. Dopamine, a hormone that creates feelings of pleasure in your mind, increases with the anticipation of an event, such as imagining eating something sweet, or imagining having sex. In fact, dopamine often increases more consistently when you imagine an act, than when you partake in the physical act itself. Who doesn't know of many times where the anticipated event, even when it did in fact happen, didn't give you the pleasure you imagined. In many ways, humans are more strongly connected to their mental world than the external world they live in. They get more emotional content out of their hopes and their regrets than their real life experiences. Thus your mental world exists, and your subconscious often interprets it as a real physical world, but it is not. You are not able to choose the actual physical reality of your body. So you can imagine many worlds, but you have no conscious choice as to the one you will physically occupy. Your mind creates a virtual reality where you feel that you have some control over the results of your actions, but in the end, though you can imagine an alternate future, the actual variation of the universe you end up in is beyond your control. You set off to climb Mount Everest and imagine the view when you finally reach the summit. But sometimes things do not happen the way you plan, sometimes you get blown off the mountain. Hence, a decision you make now, while looking great in your imagination, can lead to horrible consequences in the long term. Or an event that may seem terrible to you now, can actually evolve into something good, the blessing in disguise.

You make it seem like there is no point in trying to make concrete plans.

That is your interpretation. I am simply explaining the way things are. How you interpret that information is up to you. Perhaps I can clarify what I am saying with a well-known story from another paradigm. Have you heard of the story of the Taoist Farmer?

No.

A farmer and his son cultivated a small farm in China. The farmer's only horse ran away. His neighbors said to the farmer, "how unfortunate for you." "Maybe yes, maybe no" said the farmer. The horse then returned with another horse, a fine stallion. The neighbors said "how lucky for you." "Maybe yes, maybe no" said the farmer. The farmer taught his son to ride the stallion, but it threw his son and he broke his leg. He could not help with the farm chores anymore. This was very hard on the farmer. "How unfortunate" said the neighbors. "Maybe yes, maybe no" said the farmer. A war broke out in the region and the army forced all the young men to fight. Many were killed, but the farmer's son was not drafted because he had a broken leg. "How lucky for you" said the neighbors. "Maybe yes, maybe no" replied the farmer.

I see what you are saying. It is an example of not trying to control everything. I think people tend to do everything they can to make their imaginary world come true.

Very motivated people certainly do. In your western paradigm of science, where humans feel they have control over their environment, there is a strong belief that you should craft the world according to your will. If you want something, you must make it happen regardless of the obstacles. This was not always the belief in other paradigms. In some Native American traditions for instance, the interaction between humans and their world is different. When picking medicinal herbs, the Native American method would be to pull on the herb, if it goes, then it is ready for picking and it will have a good effect. If you pull on the herb and it does not go freely, it is not its time. You just need to move on, give up on your intention, because the herb will not give the desired result even if you do get it out. In your paradigm, you would just pull harder and harder until you got the herb.